“What does this mean?” Roma pressed. “Are they responsible for the dead men?”
“Perhaps, but it is hard to say.” Lourens set the petri dish down, then rubbed at his eyes. He seemed to hesitate, which was terribly unexpected and, for whatever reason, prompted a pit to begin growing in Roma’s stomach. In the years that Roma had known the old scientist, Lourens was always saying whatever came to mind with no concern for propriety.
“Spit it out,” Benedikt prodded.
A great, great sigh. “These are not organic creatures,” Lourens said. “Whatever these things are, God did not make them.”
And when Lourens crossed himself, Roma finally realized the unearthliness of what they were dealing with.
Five
Midday sunlight streamed through Juliette’s bedroom window. Despite the shine, it was brisk out today, chilly in the sort of way that drew the roses in the garden a little straighter, as if they couldn’t afford to lose a single second of the warmth filtering through the clouds.
“Can you believe Tyler?” Juliette fumed, pacing her room. “Who does he think he is? Has he been bullying his way around for the past four years?”
Rosalind and Kathleen both pulled a face from upon Juliette’s bed, where Rosalind was braiding Kathleen’s hair. That look was as good as confirmation.
“You know Tyler doesn’t have any real influence in this gang,” Kathleen tried. “Don’t worry—ow, Rosalind!”
“Stop moving and maybe I wouldn’t have to pull so hard,” Rosalind replied evenly. “Do you want two even braids or two lopsided braids?”
Kathleen folded her arms, huffing. Whatever point she had been raising to Juliette seemed completely forgotten. “Just wait until I learn how to braid my own hair. Then you’ll have power over me no longer.”
“You’ve been growing your hair long for five years, mèimei. Just admit you think my braiding is superior.”
A smattering of sound came from right outside Juliette’s bedroom door then. Juliette frowned, listening while Kathleen and Rosalind continued on, with no indication they had heard the same noise.
“Of course your braiding is superior. While you were learning how to style yourself and be ladylike, I was being taught how to swing a golf club and shake hands aggressively.”
“I know the tutors were bigoted assholes about your education. I’m only saying right now to stop squirming—”
“Hey, hey, hush,” Juliette whispered quickly, pressing a finger to her lips. It had been footsteps. Footsteps that stopped, probably in hopes of catching a floating piece of gossip.
While most mansions of big-name bosses sat along Bubbling Well Road in the city center, the Cai house resided quietly at the very edge of Shanghai; it was an effort to avoid the watchful eyes of the foreigners governing the city, yet despite its strange location, it was the hotspot of the Scarlet Gang. Anybody who was anybody in the network would come knocking when they had free time, even though the Cais owned countless smaller residences in the heart of the city.
In the silence, the footsteps sounded again, moving on. It probably mattered little if the maids and aunts and uncles passing by every minute tried to eavesdrop—Juliette, Rosalind, and Kathleen were always speaking in rapid English when it was only the three of them, and very few people in the house had the linguistic ability to act as eavesdroppers. Still, it was irritating.
“I think they’re gone,” Kathleen said after a while. “Anyway, before Rosalind distracted me”—she shot her sister a feigned dirty look for emphasis—“my point was that Tyler is merely a nuisance. Let him say what he wants to say. The Scarlet Gang is strong enough to deflect him.”
Juliette sighed heavily. “But I worry.” She wandered to her balcony doors. When she pressed her fingers to the glass, the heat of her skin misted up the surface immediately in little dots: five identical spots where she left her mark. “We don’t take note of it, but the blood feud casualties keep rising. Now, with this strange madness, how long will it be before we don’t have the numbers to be operating anymore?”
“That won’t happen,” Rosalind reassured her, finishing the braids. “Shanghai is under our fist—”
“Shanghai was under our fist,” her sister cut in. Kathleen sniffed, and pointed to a map of the city that Juliette had unfurled on her desk. “Now the French control the French Concession. The British, the Americans, and the Japanese have the International Settlement. And we’re battling the White Flowers for a stable grasp on everywhere else, which is a feat in itself considering how few Chinese-owned zones are left—”
“Oh, stop.” Rosalind groaned, pretending to have a fainting spell. Juliette had to stifle a giggle as Rosalind splayed an arm across her forehead and flopped back onto the bed. “You’ve been listening to too much Communist propaganda.”
Kathleen frowned. “I have not.”
“At least admit you have Communist sympathies, come on.”
“They’re not wrong,” Kathleen retorted. “This city is no longer Chinese.”
“Who cares.” Rosalind kicked out with her foot suddenly, using the momentum to push her body upright, sitting so fast that her coiffed hair whipped into her eyes. “Every armed force in this city either has an allegiance to the Scarlet Gang or the White Flowers. That is where the power is. No matter how much land we lose to the foreigners, gangsters are the most powerful force in this city, not foreign white men.”
“Until the foreign white men start rolling in their own artilleries,” Juliette muttered. She walked away from the balcony doors and trailed back toward her vanity table, hovering by the long seat. Almost absently, she reached out, trailing her finger along the lip of the ceramic vase that sat by her cosmetics. There used to be a blue-and-white Chinese vase here, but red roses did not match the whorls of porcelain, and so the swap had been made for a Western design instead.
It would have been so much easier if the Scarlets had run the foreigners out, had chased them away with bullets and threats the moment their ships and their fancy goods docked in the Bund. Even now the gangsters could still join forces with the tired factory workers and their boycotts. Together, if only the Scarlet Gang wanted to, they could overrun the foreigners… but they wouldn’t. The Scarlet Gang was profiting far too much. They needed this investment, this economy, these stacks and stacks of money flooding into their ranks and holding them afloat.